INTRODUCTION
I. How and Why I wrote this book
It all started after my conversion.
For the record, I was born into a Christian family and from my childhood I was baptized with water, therefore admitted into the family of the children of God. But due to a lack of spiritual guidance and follow up, I had really drifted away from God while I was growing up. I was just an apparent Christian, without any intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, I even spent a full year without going to church, but I was considering myself as a Christian.
So when the waves of pornography and masturbation came into my life, they swept me away like the tsunami devastates everything in its path, because I did not weigh enough spiritually. I suffered for a long time, yes! I suffered a long time from these addictions since I was a child but I didn’t dare to say it because it was stronger than me. From the day I started with these practices until the day the Lord delivered me, and even when I fell down again, I tell you no one surprised me. So I didn’t give up because my works were discovered but because I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to be free, I was fed up. I was looking for the one who could help me to get out of
there, but no one could listen to me because those alarm cries were only in my heart, I was ashamed to talk about it for fear of being judged and misunderstood by others.
I suffered for a long time, I don’t know exactly how many years, but I suffered from these things for more than seven years.
I really knew that the enemy had imprisoned me, but I was just relativizing my problem, I wasn’t taking it too seriously. Even when I decided to take it seriously, I would let go and sink deeper. Until one day, thanks to a friend, I joined a prayer group in my church. And that’s when the Lord set me free because we were praying seriously. I understood then that what I was missing during all these years of captivity was a serious prayer life. Not just the habit of going to Church on Sundays, but a personal and living relationship with Jesus Christ.
Before I joined this group, I was just delaying things. I could say, “I will go to prayer this week,” but in the end I didn’t go. I felt very lazy when it came to praying. It took me two months to finally get there. Later I understood that this heaviness did not come from God, it was a modus operandi of the devil to prevent me from going to the place of my deliverance. This can also be the case for you today. You make decisions, but when you have to apply them you feel very lazy. I would like to tell you that this does not come from God.
I knew Jesus Christ only by name, but when I began to pray seriously, He began to reveal Himself to me, and today He is my Friend and I know Him, not only by name but personally.
On my way, in search of deliverance from pornography and masturbation, I met Jesus Christ. When He delivered me, He washed me, He revealed Himself to me, and I fell in love with Him, I now had a deep desire to know Him and to know His word as well. The logical consequence was that I had given up my former life, and I consecrated my youth to Him (Jesus Christ). This is how my life changed, this is how He changed me, this is how I was converted years after my baptism. Being baptized does not always mean knowing Jesus Christ personally. After your baptism you must seek God with all your heart.
After being delivered
So I decided to write something about how to overcome pornography and masturbation based on my experience. Before I had the idea of publishing
only one article, but the more I wrote, the more pages I was writing because I had a lot to say about it. What was an article had turned into a small twenty-eight- page book that I had published. Humbly I can say that it was a success, and I will always thank God for the feedback I received about the book. The Lord touched and delivered many lives.
But as I reread this twenty-eight-page book, I realized that I hadn’t said everything, or simply hadn’t said certain things as I should have said them. Truly, the Lord really opened my mind and explained to me some deep things about how to overcome these practices. By reading the experiences of others, by listening to the cries of alarm of those who are still under these yokes, I then decided to improve the content of this twenty-eight-page book that I had written, by adding to it what the Lord had explained to me and what others had also experienced. This is how this book was “born”.
The fall
There are things that hurt and sometimes you can’t find words to express them because they are painful. What I am going to tell you is a period that has been really difficult for me in my walk with the Lord, and especially as a servant of God.
After I was delivered and wrote the first edition of this book, something horrible happened to me. Something I never imagined. You know, when the
Lord gives a mission, He always gives directions to follow to accomplish it. That was the case with me. When He asked me to write this book, He gave me directions to follow. Glory be to God, until it was published I had tried to follow them. It was after the publication of the book that the Lord had asked me to withdraw in prayer for a while, I knew it and I felt it. But I had not observed his recommendations. I continued to promote the book, to tell people what to do to be delivered from these yokes of the devil, without respecting what the Lord was secretly ordering me to do.
With my own intelligence, I told myself that the ideal places to reach people held captive by these practices were the pornographic pages on the social network Facebook. And so, with no intention of going to watch pornographic videos or images, I began to visit these pages to urge these people and tell them about the book. I thought I was strong enough to never fall into pornography and masturbation again. What madness! You see, the fall begins when one no longer obeys the directives of the Holy Spirit. As I was no longer in the will of the Lord, little by little I began to slip, until I fell. It was humiliating and very painful, the author of the book was himself on the ground…disaster!
I had to get over it, because it had really hurt my heart. I could feel some kind of wound in my heart. But I had not kept my sin, I had confessed it. Since I know how satan works, as long as you fight
him in darkness, he will defeat you. To defeat him, you have to take him into the light. And in this struggle, the light is confession. As long as this sin is hidden, it will never be defeated.
From this unfortunate history I’d like you to remember three things. The first is that don’t joke with your weaknesses, especially not sexual sin, because the ones he brought down were spiritually strong. Flee any opportunity for a fall, no matter how small it is. The second is that our God is truly merciful to those who return to Him with all their heart and who now desire to walk in His ways. Whatever your past, whatever life you lead now, if you decide to come to God with all your heart, He will welcome you. I myself am a witness of what I am saying. The third thing is that during your process of deliverance, a fall may happen, but never give up, continue the struggle until you are totally free. My desire is for the Lord to make you totally free as He has done with me. In reality you are already free by the blood of Jesus Christ, you just have to grasp your deliverance and make it sit in your life.
Why did I write it?
First of all because the Lord made me understand that I could help many people get out of pornography and masturbation, thanks to what I myself have experienced, and especially thanks to what He explained to me.
Then I wrote it because when I was looking for books that could help me overcome pornography and masturbation, I couldn’t find any. If I found any, they were too scientific, and I didn’t understand anything. I was looking for practical things that could help me get out of the hole I had thrown myself into and the enemy had locked me in. So I said to myself, I would write a book that could solve, as far as possible, the problems I myself had encountered when I was looking for books that could help me overcome pornography and masturbation.
When I read some of the articles published on this subject, I realized that the authors of the articles were only talking about the problems. Almost all of them said that pornography and masturbation were sins before God, but they didn’t really offer readers concrete solutions to overcome these addictions. This is one more reason why I wrote this book. Through the book, I will explain spiritual principles that will help you overcome these things. I won’t be too scientific, I’ll go straight to the point.
In fact, I wrote the book I would have liked to read when I was under the yoke of pornography and masturbation.